Elsie, MI
How exposed is Elsie to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Elsie at the 3rd national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 570 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Elsie at the 3rd percentile, close to its 3rd-percentile risk score.
Elsie's building exposure, zone by zone
82.1% of Elsie's 570 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 17.9% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
Where Elsie ranks
There's little gap between Elsie's 3rd national percentile and its 5th percentile inside Michigan, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Elsie ranks 30,578 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,249 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 707 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Elsie
Elsie's low rating (3rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With 82.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Elsie gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Elsie's 30,578-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Elsie, see the exposure-zones guide.